24
Jun
Vista PC won’t go to sleep
This problem first happened with RC1 of Vista. I’d press the sleep button (or select Sleep from the Start menu). My PC would go through all its shutdown things, blank the screen and immediately wake up. After a short while the login screen would be displayed, I’d type my password and be back where I started.
I read on the www.tabletquestions.com forum of other people who’d had similar problems and some had referred to a POWERCFG utility. This turned out to the problem on my PC.
I ran this utility (in a Command window, as administrator) with the “–DEVICEQUERY wake-armed” parameters and got a list of hardware devices that would wake the PC up. This showed:
C:\Windows\system32>powercfg -devicequery wake_armed
Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard
Microsoft USB Wheel Mouse Optical
So if there was activity on my mouse or keyboard, the system would wake up from sleep. It seems that when going to sleep, there’s enough activity from the mouse to wake the system up. Also I didn’t really want the PC to wake up just because I’d moved the mouse out of the way on my desk. So I disabled the mouse as a wake-up device:
C:\Windows\system32>powercfg -devicedisablewake “Microsoft USB Wheel Mouse Optical”
Now the devicequery request does not show the mouse:
C:\Windows\system32>powercfg -devicequery wake_armed
Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard
It could be argued I don’t want the keyboard to wake the PC up either, but my motherboard does support wake from sleep on the keyboard so I might give that a go in the future – at the moment it’s disabled in the BIOS.
Anyway my PC now goes to sleep.
Why write about this now, since the problem happened with RC1 and did not resurface when I installed a full version of Vista. Until yesterday when I replaced the power supply and case. It’s possible that changing the PSU caused Vista to lose its power settings.
Cool, i had a similar problem and that sorted it.
June 25th, 2007 at 12:15 amGreat tip, used it on my blog linked you
July 16th, 2007 at 1:27 amDoesn’t work for me. I click ’sleep’ form the start menu. The pc then slowly switches things off (monitor, then after a while the hard disk, then the fans, then finally the system itself), sleeps for the breifest of moments, only to immediately wake up. There could be some wierd setting in the bios that I need to set, but this all worked perfectly under XP. Microsoft just seem to have ballsd it up.
July 16th, 2007 at 1:39 am[...] It can be irritating when you bump your mouse and it wakes up your pc. I Found this useful tip on… http://www.gordonknight.co.uk [...]
July 16th, 2007 at 1:39 am@tim
July 16th, 2007 at 5:22 pmWhat output do you get from powercfg -devicequery wake_armed. That’s likely to be the clue. If it includes a mouse or stylus or anything like that I found that it’s a good idea to disable it. your mouse may not have the same name as mine.
Hi Derek,
Strangely enough, now I get nothing at all from that query, not even a status message. I’d gone through the control panel and turned off the “wake when sharing media” setting already (which seems like a stupid default). Last time I tried the shutdown I did a query to see what last woke the pc back up:
Z:\Users\Tim>powercfg -lastwake
Wake History Count – 0
but as you can see, nothing at all. I think my PC is an insomniac.
July 16th, 2007 at 9:48 pmthat didnt work for my problem but this did
July 17th, 2007 at 10:42 amhttp://pchelpmate.net/?p=71
My network card was waking my pc dead
@Tim. Is yours the same problem? My machine doesn’t have Wake On LAN enabled – I am not sure if that’s a BIOS thing – and I’d have to reboot to find out, which I don’t do very often
. It’s certainly worth checking out @lazerbeak’s URL.
July 17th, 2007 at 4:46 pmMouse
yeah thats what I ment, i didnt remember the spelling but i did remember the meaning of the Mouse
July 30th, 2007 at 4:57 amBrilliant – fixed it at last. Thanks for the tip.
August 13th, 2007 at 9:23 amGreat tip, solved my problem imediately. Thanks
August 31st, 2007 at 6:05 amThanks a lot! I couldn’t put Vista to sleep mode. Now it works like a charm
September 16th, 2007 at 11:31 pmI had the same problem: After choosing sleep, Vista would reanimate on its own 1 to 10 seconds later. Annoying!
For me the trick was to realize that perhaps something was waking the computer up – and then to tell Vista to ignore it. It was both my (1) mouse and (2) Vista’s dumb multimedia sharing option.
Mouse: Easy solution (often posted elsewhere). Shut it up. Do this:
Control Panel -> Device Manager -> Mice -> Right-click your specific mouse -> Properties -> Power Management tab -> uncheck “Allow this device to wake the computer”
Vista’s dumb multimedia sharing option: More complex (and I don’t think anyone else has posted it). Do this:
Control Panel -> Power Options -> If “High Performance” is selected, choose something else, like “Balanced” (I don’t know why this works) -> Change plan settings (for the chosen power plan) -> Change advanced power settings -> Scroll down to Multimedia settings -> Choose “Allow the computer to sleep”
My, won’t your computer feel much more rested, and your power bill will go down to boot.
November 13th, 2007 at 6:03 pmMy issue was a little different. My Vista was just turning the screen off. But curiously enough it was also turning my mute button on!
That’s when I realized, Vista was trying to trick me.
Thanks to Fungi, I remembered I had turned the Media Sharing on few days ago.
)
December 22nd, 2007 at 11:09 pmSo If you need the Media Sharing, just follow what Fungi said, otherwise go to the ‘Network and Sharing center’. Scroll down to ‘Media Sharing’. Expand the panel with the arrow on the right, press ‘Change…’. On the new pop-up, uncheck the checkbox ‘Share my media’ and validate with the ‘OK’ button. That’s all. (Well, assuming that’s youi don’t have further issues
This solved my problem, but it wasn’t my mouse that was waking my comp up, it was my NVIDA network controller. I disabled the wake feature on it, now it sleeps the good sleep.
January 14th, 2008 at 6:27 pmdisable windows media center in vista
January 29th, 2008 at 6:02 pmThanks for the tip,
February 28th, 2008 at 1:08 amfor me too it was the network controller
Apart from keyboard and mouse, the following devices could also wake up the system from sleep:
NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller
High Definition Audio Controller
PCI Soft Data Fax Modem with SmartCP
You may want to disable them via Control Panel -> Device Manager -> -> Power Management tab -> uncheck “Allow this device to wake the computer”
April 15th, 2008 at 2:49 pmI had the same problem on my desktop. The computer awoke from sleep immediately after going to sleep. I went to Control Panel, Power Options, Edit Plan Settings. Click on Change Advanced Power Settings. Expand “Power buttons and lid.” Click on “Start Menu Power Button.” Click on “Sleep” (or whatever is shown in color). A drop-down menu will appear. Select “hibernate”, and click on “Apply”, the “OK”.
April 19th, 2008 at 1:25 amWhen you use the shutdown button on the start menu, your computer will save your settings and go into hibernate. When you want to resume, use the physical start button on the computer. The machine will restart with all the programs open as of the time you went into hibernate. The mouse and keyboard will not awaken the computer from hibernate, you must use the button on the computer.
I don’t have a sleeping problem but when I shut my compaq Pre-sorry-o down, The image leaves (on the Dell monitor) but power stays to the monitor – VISTA home basic
May 13th, 2008 at 4:36 pmHOW CAN I GET THE MONITOR TO AUTO TURN OFF?
If you’re saying that when you’ve shut Vista down (or any operating system for that matter), the montor stays switched on, that’s not an OS issue. Some monitors have a sleep mode, so if the are left switched on, after a while they go to sleep. Others will stay switched on. It just depends on the monitor
November 11th, 2009 at 10:44 am